It's almost like the map is not like the maps we're used to that call out the most major centers by population, but they instead identify systems by mainworld which could have the highest pop, could be the lowest pop, could possibly have different TLs in the system and maybe not be the highest (didn't check, but could be), or maybe for political or diplomatic regions... in other words, good for knowing what the official ports are (for importing/trade if everything has to go to the Starport of the mainworld) but not very useful as a trade / commercial Atlas or as a representation of population in systems (for human geography and for looking at total economic value of systems). 

The more you look at things like that, the more the 'Interstellar trade is small and high value luxury items' model makes some sense. That sort of an old, shattered, balkanized, rebuilt, re-balkanized sort of setting would tend to focus more on political importance or other strange notions for map making than on populations or even trade-related things. Of course, the Imperial Fleets and the cost of them says 'large trade' and 'big, well organized systems all over' and would probably fit better with maps that were about trade and sophont populations.

Never let it be said ye olde game doesn't have some sort of contradictory points in its construction.

TomB

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 1:13 PM Thomas RUX <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote:
Hi Phil,
On 09/30/2020 2:02 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

Something just occurred to me;

Do any of the various schemes for generating detailed systems offer the possibility of a lo-POP 'mainworld' where the 'official' starport is located and also other worlds w/ larger or even much, much larger POP's?If the scheme for generating detailed systems
Making a quick check of the schemes for generating detailed systems the ones that generate the starport prior to the main world's population appears to be capable of creating a lo-pop main world with the official star port and other worlds with a higher population in my opinion.

Tom Rux

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